by Neil D'Silva
“Thanks,” he said. “I think we must celebrate.”
“There will be a celebration in the school with the students,” said Maya, not understanding the line thrown at her.
“Who said anything about the students?” he said, this time with more emphasis.
Maya looked at him sharply as the implication of the question dawned upon her. She was not completely sure, but she felt he gave her a slight wink right then.
~ 3.5 ~
A Carnal Passion
If stench were a concrete, visible thing, that room would have been covered in a sickly fog so thick it could be cut with a knife. But for the lone man sitting inside the little chamber, filled with rotting human flesh in every corner, this was a holy place. For him, it was a place of meditation, a place where he could be truly himself. A place where he was supreme.
No one had ever come to this place for years, except the ones he had brought into it himself, and he wanted to keep it that way. The place did not have a single door or a window. It was at the absolute end of an abandoned garage. He entered in it through a hole in the roof, to access which he had to climb atop the junk of a dozen cars. He was lithe and athletic, and he could manage it. It only became difficult when he brought the guests into this place, more so because they could never move by themselves.
Dogs howled through the night outside the place, wondering where the inviting smell of the flesh came from, but no dog had ever been able to find the entrance to the place. Sitting inside, he often laughed at their puzzlement. When they tried to claw at the walls, in a vain effort to get inside, his laughter turned sinister.
This was the place and time he usually ate at. His food was of the kind that could send a shudder down most people’s spines. He ate things like human hearts and livers and kidneys; he had a penchant for the texture of cardiac muscle. There was particular relish in preparing exotic dishes out of human muscle and then garnishing them in innovative ways and gulping it all down with a whisk of toddy. He even kept cookbooks to help him along the process, only replacing the meats mentioned therein with the stuff that interested his palate.
His eating regimen was much like a hyena’s. He didn’t hunt all the time. A periodic hunt was sufficient for a long time, for he did not mind the bitter fermented taste that human meat developed if kept for long periods of time.
Sometimes he wished he had never inculcated the habit. It had been a developed taste for sure. He hadn’t been born with it, but now he was at a stage where he just couldn’t do without it. On the days he didn’t get human meat—and of those there were plenty—he had to make do with pork, but it just wasn’t the same thing. Hogs had too much fat in them.
However, today he didn’t feel hungry. He didn’t want to eat. Several parts of the screaming slum girl he had killed a few days ago were still serviceable, despite the rats having scavenged most of it. But today, he didn’t even want to look at the girl.
Today was dedicated to the object of his fantasies. He had finally managed to get a picture of her. He couldn’t get enough of that simple, unmade up face, and he couldn’t plan enough what he wanted to do with it.
Impatiently, he stripped himself of all clothing, and sat on the only chair in the entire place amidst the rotting corpses. He was built like a cheetah with a narrow head and a firm torso that didn’t have an ounce of fat despite the forty years he had spent in this life. This was odd, because red meat, which is what he ate most of the time, is supposed to be fattening. Probably he was blessed with a robust digestive system.
He tore the picture delicately into two halves. He didn’t need scissors; his artistic hands did a deft job. When he was done with it, the unwanted portions had been trimmed away neatly along the outline of the woman of his ultimate desires. Then he took the picture close to his face and imagined the woman was present with him in flesh and blood; and that stirred his groin with a wild passion. With one hand to satisfy the growing excitement between his thighs and another hand to hold her picture, he brought it close to his lips and kissed it. He placed the kiss right on the lips and held it that way, his eyes closed, and he fantasized about what he could do if he had her for real.
He sat like that, his eyes closed, his lips tightly pressed on her lips in the photograph and his right hand moving violently on his erection until he could take it no more. As his lustfulness grew, his whole body started pulsating till he reached his climax and brought down his fury all over the photograph. When he saw his white fluid spread over her flawless cheeks, he let out a loud moan of pleasure.
He sat like that for a long time, sweat and other bodily fluids discharged from his body, and contemplated on other things now that his carnal passions had subsided.
Then his self-loving turned into self-loathing. He realized the monstrosity of his act—it was wrong on so many levels. He wasn’t supposed to pleasure himself. It was a sin. He had committed sins before, but he had always sought forgiveness. The path to forgiveness was never easy, but it had to be taken. Someone had once told him: You have to atone, for atonement is the path to deliverance. The words had been spoken long ago, but it was as if he could hear them even in that very moment.
He felt thoroughly ashamed of himself and squirmed in his chair, feeling more naked than he really was. He needed pardon for his act and that wouldn’t come without punishment. So he wiped the incriminating fluid that had oozed out of his body and sat down on the ground and took a particularly jagged stone that a rat seemed to be nibbling on. Holding it like a spearhead, he brought it down full force on his shin.
His cry pierced the wisps of the fog-stench that hung over the room like a cloud. In his twisted mind, the waste of one bodily fluid could only be compensated by the letting out of another.
~ 4 ~
Over the Hill
The late nights had begun to worry Anuradha. She had grown used to Namrata returning home late from work, but it was hard for her to come to terms with Maya staying out late.
Maya and Namrata were separated by five years. Five years is a long time for a parent to vest their hopes and ambitions in their children, which is what Anuradha had done in Maya before Namrata was born. The consequence was that the older daughter was expected to be the good one, the one who could never slip, while the younger one had the privilege to be flippant and obstinate and even wayward whenever she chose.
That is why Anuradha could digest Namrata returning home after midnight, but when Maya started doing it too, it began to bother the cautious mother in her.
Mornings had changed as well. There was a time when Maya would not allow anyone in the kitchen when she prepared breakfast, but now she could hardly get up before the sun had traversed a considerable bit of sky over the horizon. Anuradha casually asked her about her late nights, but never received an answer that could placate her unquiet mind. Now, when the late night trysts had gone on for over three weeks, she decided she could not stay mum about it any longer.
She went into Maya’s room and found she had just woken up. She was sitting up in bed and looking for her slippers.
“What is it, Ma?” asked Maya. “You are freaking me out, entering my bedroom like that.”
“It’s nothing,” said the mother. “Did you sleep enough? You were back home quite late.”
Maya yawned. “I am not late for school, am I?” she asked.
“What time was it when you returned last night?”
“Is this going to be another interrogation?” said Maya.
“No, of course not!” Anuradha got up, realizing that this approach wouldn’t work. The curt response from her favorite daughter put her on the back foot. An early-morning confrontation with her wouldn’t be the best thing to do. “Would you like your tea with masala or without?” she asked instead and retreated from the room.
It was about an hour later, when Maya was about to leave for school, that Anuradha accosted her again. “I’d like to know if you will be late tonight as well.”
“I don’t know, for God’s s
ake!” said Maya.
“Maya!” There was a seriousness in Anuradha’s tone now. “Is something the matter? You have been so despondent lately.”
“There is nothing, absolutely nothing.”
“Let us know if there is something,” the mother said. At that moment, Namrata came out of her room, still yawning and her hair a mess. “We three women have just got each other,” said Anuradha, looking at her daughters.
“Yes,” said Maya, stepping out of the room. “Perhaps it is time to let someone else into the family.”
Leaving her mother and sister to grapple with that statement, Maya walked out, shutting the door behind her.
***
Bhaskar and Maya had been going out for almost a month now. No one knew yet about the dalliance between the Biology teacher and the Arts teacher, not even their colleagues at school. They made sure to choose places that were out of the way for their acquaintances. They rarely chose a location this side of Dadar. The distance from their home ground made them feel safer.
Sitting at the Irani Café, she looked at him as he decided what to have. “What are you ordering?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” he said, and he smiled with those pearly-white teeth she had begun to like so much. “They don’t really serve what I like here.”
“So what is it that you like?”
He ran his hand over her smooth arm and lightly pinched the soft flesh of her forearm.
“You!” he replied with a snide glint in his eye.
And she blushed.
***
It had been a smooth transition from revulsion to romance. The days passed on swiftly, but Maya felt as though she knew him since ages. There was something magical about the whole thing, she felt at times. Something that she could not lay her finger on, and even if she tried to understand it, it eluded her.
That night after the victory at the Science Exhibition, he took her to a restaurant where they sat on couple’s seat in a cozy corner. She noticed he didn’t eat much, but he asked her to try out the food there. He ordered mutton and she delicately told him she was a vegetarian, at which he made a strange face that she couldn’t quite understand. He insisted she have wine at least, and she said she didn’t mind that.
After their first dinner together, he escorted her to her building entrance like a thorough gentleman, and bid her goodbye. She knew she couldn’t invite him upstairs, and he didn’t expect that either. When she looked at her watch, it was nearing eleven and she suffered a panic attack. She took the stairs instead of the elevator, for she needed to conjure an excuse to fend her mother’s interrogation that would inevitably follow.
But then, she was late the next day too, and the day after that, and eventually the day came when they realized they could go watch movies. The cinema halls gave them a great deal of privacy. They chose the last row, corner seats, and irrespective of which movie it was, they turned it into a session of hand-holding. He didn’t go beyond that, and Maya was thankful for that because she didn’t know how she would have reacted if he did. However, the hand-holding had begun to turn intense, till Maya herself wanted it to be more than just that; only, she didn’t have the courage to ask for it upfront.
She reprimanded herself for the animal attraction that was beginning to well up within her. Here she was—an educated, sophisticated woman—falling for this man who was quite close to the definition of a boor. But she could not pull herself apart from him. For the first few days, she set out with a mind not to meet him anymore, but whenever his rugged form made its appearance, she would simply shed her inhibitions and walk behind him as though she were in a daze.
All this wasn’t lost on Padma, who had been Maya’s usual partner in crime through the upheavals of her career and most of her personal life as well. Padma quickly sensed something was not usual, and when she saw the way her friend had started communicating with Bhaskar, her suspicions were confirmed. But they shook her to the core. This man was quite the wrong sort for her friend. He wasn’t the kind of person she would want to go out with at all. Padma’s acute senses told her that something was not right, and she was belabored by the thought until, one day, she decided to question Maya about it.
“Maya,” she said on one of those now rare occasions when they would share their lunchboxes, “is something keeping you occupied nowadays? No, I am not trying to pry, but I rarely see you staying back after classes the way you used to do earlier. Not that I have anything against it, but I miss your cooking.”
Maya took one sharp look at Padma and that made her uncomfortable in her seat. The question was guarded but it had been asked all the same. Maya took an instant to think of a suitable reaction. Should she pretend to be upset or should she take it in her stride and laugh it off? What would put this bloodhound off her track?
“Oh, you have that look,” said Padma. “I have seen this look on you when you are doing something you don’t really like. What is it, Maya? You can have faith in me if it is a secret.”
They were in her cabin and the door could swing open any minute. “I am falling for someone,” said Maya.
“I knew it,” said Padma, standing up. “It is wonderful! Finally you are over the hill with Samar. Who is it?” She knew but she wanted to hear it from her mouth.
“Bhaskar.”
“Bhaskar?” repeated Padma with muted derision.
“Yes.”
Padma realized she had overreacted. She had known it all along. She had seen the surreptitious glances the two had thrown at each other. She had even seen them leaving the school together once. She knew Maya would speak about Bhaskar in a different tone soon, but now that the moment had arrived, she didn’t really know how to react.
“What is that?” snapped Maya. “Why the poo-face?”
“I was only wondering how it happened, that’s all. I mean, weren’t you quite against him until a few days ago?”
“I never hated him. Who said I hated him?”
There was a strong intensity in Maya’s denial. Padma knew not to pursue this line of conversation. Nothing is as vitriolic as the words coming out from a new lover’s mouth when they are cornered.
“He is a thorough gentleman,” continued Maya. “Rosie was right about him. He doesn’t have a handsome face, but so what? He definitely knows how to treat a woman. He knows to say the right things, do the right things, touch the right places—”
At that, Padma’s eyes opened wide. “Have you?” she asked with avid interest.
“Of course not!” Maya said with greater vehemence than she intended. “It is just an emotional connection between us.”
What emotional connection, Padma wondered. But she did not dare say that out loud.
***
Maya should have started knowing Bhaskar better on that day, a little before Diwali, when they were walking hand in hand on a street after an early evening movie show. It was a new locality, keeping with their tradition of not visiting the same places twice, and Maya was taking in the sights just as she was basking in his appealing musky scent.
The street was silent as they walked on, talking sweet nothings that made little sense, but as they took a turn to move towards the Matunga railway station, they came across a hotspot of frenetic devotional activity. Suddenly, the smell of flowers and incense sticks wafted through the air and pleased their nostrils. Beggars and no-gooders lined the other side of the street. A man sold devotional CDs on a makeshift stand and people milled around him, hunting for the best bargain their middleclass incomes could buy. These were unmistakable signs that a popular temple was nearby.
It was a Shiva temple.
“Are you religious?” Bhaskar asked her.
“A little,” Maya said. “I do believe God exists. I don’t hold much stock with rituals, though.”
“Well, if you don’t mind,” he said, “I’d like to visit this temple. My people have always been disciples of Lord Shiva, and whenever I see anything Shaivic, I have to pay my respects.”
“S
ure, then we must go. Let’s go in together.”
“This will only take a minute,” he said gratefully.
It was dark but several devotees had lined up outside the temple for a pre-dinner visit. He left her hand as he approached the temple and straightened his shirt and ran his fingers through his hair. She followed his lead and began walking at a respectable distance behind him. Her attention was now riveted on the awe-inspiring idol of Lord Shiva that adorned the sanctum sanctorum of the shrine. There he sat in a ramrod posture and a benevolent smile on his face, bedecked with his damaru and trishula and with the various strings of rudraksha beads around his neck. The blue God looked upon his devotees, oblivious to the three coils of the naga Vasuki slithering around his neck. The crescent moon in his jata only added to his beauty and the Ganga emerging from it added to his omnipotence.
Then she happened to look at him—Bhaskar—who rang the temple bell and fell prostrate on the floor. Like his favorite God, he too was oblivious of everything around him now. He focused single-mindedly on his devotion and, when he stood up, it was with his eyes closed and with utmost sincerity. In that one moment, Maya looked at his stoic face and was alarmed at what she saw. Bhaskar’s face with its strange ruggedness seemed to transform into a thing of beauty. Bathed in the yellow temple light, he did not look much different from the handsome entity he was now practicing his devotion to.
But it was a sinful thought. Maya realized the gravity of what she had done—she had compared an inconsequential mortal man to an immortal all-powerful God. She immediately removed the thought from her mind and proceeded to take the prasada. The pundit smeared a holy red powder on her forehead as she took a piece of coconut and pedha from the tray and hurried out from the place, brushing against the steady flow of incoming devotees in the process.
